LACMA Museum Visit Essay

The third floor of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art houses a permanent collection on antique Egyptian art. One of the pieces there is a 13 high figurine of the goddess Wadjet, sculpted from bronze in during the 26th Dynasty, est. 664-525 BCE. The figurine is in the round, with notwithstanding the goddesss feet attached the rectangular nucleotide she stands on. The hieroglyphs on the base identify her, as well as the name and parentage of the person who dedicated her figurine. She is shown in the conventional ancient Egyptian pose, with her left foot for fightd. She is wearing some sort of dress, but her decidedly distaff figure, with a curved abdomen, narrow waist, and protruding breasts, is clearly portrayed through it.Her right arm is held bolt at her side, again in strict stylistic convention, and her left arm bends only at the elbow to hold whatever less enduring material was placed there. In fact, both of her manpower were clearly intended to encircle props, but these have been lost and as such, what they once were can only be inferred from other portrayals of the goddess. She clearly wears necklaces, armbands, and bracelets this highly detailed work is also present on her lions mane, which is shaped similarly to the pharoahs headdress. She has the head of a lioness, upon which rests the sacred cobra and sun disk, called the uraeus.The goddess Wadjet was emblematic of get Egypt- she was often portrayed with her counterpart in Upper Egypt, Nekhbet, handing their joint power to the pharaoh of the time. Other than those human depictions, she was normally shown as a cobra, which allows this piece to be dated- she was only pictured with the lioness head after her mythology was merged with that of Bast, the war goddess of Lower Egypt, in the Late Dynastic period. (source?) As a symbol of Lower Egypt, it can be surmised that she was holding a papyrusscepter in her left hand, and an ankh in her right.These figurines were commonly bought by soused patr ons visiting temples. They often had the remains of animals inside them. Put more stuff here.Sources_Figurine of the Goddess Wadjet_. 664-525 BCE. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles.Watterson, Barbara. _Gods of Ancient Egypt_. 1984. Godalming, Surrey Bramley Books Limited, 1999.